My brother is my better half,
or so my father always said.
His hands are rough but neat,
whereas mine are sinewy and strange.
His jaw is square but gentle,
whereas mine is a trough for tilting white tombstones.
His eyes are bright and shiny as copper pennies,
whereas mine glow like the sickly sun on pondwater.
He walks in long, smooth strides
that no one ever doubted
would take him where he wanted to go.
I do not have the confidence to walk so forcefully,
so trustingly.
My brother is the best son my parents could have hoped to have,
and I am not my brother.
But I am also not his flock,
nor am I his keeper.

I stare at the glowing screen,
Far too bright
Because I override the energy saver settings,
Far too sleek
Because I erase each fingerprint on the hem of some garment before it has lasted a minute in this world,
Far too small,
And rigid,
And boxed,
To contain the vast – no –
Infinite portion of a life that it does.
Lit up in a thousand minuscule pixels
Is a single text,
A single word,
"Fuck!"
I smile as I read it,
That little word in a little grey speech bubble,
The last in a long timeline of silent conversation,
Back and forth:
Green, grey, green, grey, green...
Grey.
The last word. 
My smile fades.
Outside of the small,
Rigid
Box,
The conversations have grown silent too.
The last one was short.
I told him I might have made a mistake
In changing the text tone on my phone
To such a startling sound.
He sends that last word,
A test,
And my phone blares,
A gasping, mechanical sound
That few recognize.
We get curious looks,
We laugh,
And then we leave.
Since then there has been nothing but silence,
And I stare at the screen,
Far too bright.

Patterns in old red stone,
surfaces worn by the worn surfaces of countless soles,
making their own patterns.

When on a space ship, 
Do not open a window,
It's not refreshing.